Can anyone explain Troop Ships?

It seems that some planets can build them, and some can't even if they have the Marine Barracks. Also, some planets can build one, and some can build multiples even if they have a smaller population base. I'm sure there's some weird detail I'm missing here but can't figure it out. Can anyone shed some light on this please?

You need to have enough marines to fill the ship to build them. 4 is default upgraded to 6 with tech. A planet takes time to retrain its marines so even if it has say 12 max marines it may only have a couple trained. At capacity you could build 3 transports or 2 with the tech upgrade. Until it reaches 4(6) the troop transport won't show on your build list.

You get Marines on your planet after you build a Marine Barracks. You get a new marine after a few turns I believe (not 100% the number). Once you have enough marines on your planet, you can build Troop Transports. I've had 4 marine units per troop transport. They are like Civ Transports in that they take that Marine units and puts it on a ship. Once you train more Marines, you can build more Troop Transports. I'm not sure if there is currently a way to tell how many Marines you have on your planet.

When you bomb or invade an enemy planet, you see their current defensive structures. The more Marines they have, the more icons they have (little guys with the Helmets that look like Halo). That's how many marines are stationed on that planet. So imagine that for your own planets.

When you invade an enemy planet, you have the choice to deploy all your marines at once if you like. So if each ship carries 4 marines, two troop transports would carry 8 and so forth. You have an option if they are stacked to deploy 4 marines or 8 marines, etc.

That would explain why you can't build troop transports on some, and why you can build multiple on others. Once you construct a Marine Barracks, it takes a few turns to crank out Marine Units. So if you can't build a troop transport, just wait a bit and then you should have enough.

Yes. You need marine barracks. In EA 2, it took 5 turns to train a unit of marines. Also, the population cap determines how many marines a world could have. The smallest world pop cap 3 could have 4 troops, 10 could have 13, etc. This meant that some worlds could not build troop transports once you increased the number of marines a transport would have. By default, the capacity of transports was 4, but a tech makes it 6. I don't know if there is a way to roll things back. Fortunately, there are some techs that improve the quality of worlds, so it is possible to fix that problem.

There are traits that can reduce the training time to 4 turns instead of 5, and increase the capacity by 4. Again, EA 2 numbers.

I generally find it wise to build troop transports in advance. Travel time is a pain, more so if you have to wait for ships to be built. On top of that, your worlds can only have so many troops so you can't spontaneously decide to make a marine army and expect to have enough. Chances are you will run out of troops and transports forcing you to wait until you can build more.

Wouldn't it make more sense to simply treat the "troop transports" as *transports*, meaning as ships that can *load* marines at one planet and *unload* on another? Why should you build them all the time anew or need to wait until marines are available? No one can hinder you to build an empty transport and load it later.

One could even make that a ship special: "troop pods". So, if you design a ship that has troop pods you can load marines - either to conquer enemy planets or to board enemy ships or star bases. Of course these troop pods should be an early tech. So, you would have ships for "air superiority", ships for bombardment and ships for invasion etc.

Wouldn't it make more sense to simply treat the "troop transports" as *transports*, meaning as ships that can *load* marines at one planet and *unload* on another? Why should you build them all the time anew or need to wait until marines are available? No one can hinder you to build an empty transport and load it later.

One could even make that a ship special: "troop pods". So, if you design a ship that has troop pods you can load marines - either to conquer enemy planets or to board enemy ships or star bases. Of course these troop pods should be an early tech. So, you would have ships for "air superiority", ships for bombardment and ships for invasion etc.

Oh this is an interesting concept, the troop pods. I'll see if this is something that the devs can look into.

The Klingons er Bulrathi should have the advantage when it comes to ship invasions. Bring down the enemy shields and have them completely raid and take over the ship as their own. They should also get a chance to steal whatever tech was on that ship as well, so they can use it for themselves.

Oh this is an interesting concept, the troop pods. I'll see if this is something that the devs can look into.

In MOO2 there used to be Assault Shuttles and a troop pod to double ship-borne marines. The old game had a special play style, loading neutron cannons (and ultimately the death ray) to kill enemy marines, then use teleporters to take enemy ships.
If your race was Telepathic you could immediately use their ship against them. In any case the enemy fleet would focus on the "traitor" ships and leave you to blast away at them.

I love the idea of modules installed on hulls to be specialty ships. Why should troop transports be used up? This means you wouldn't have to worry about writing code for "civilian ships".
Build a titan sized colony ship with lots of extra population modules. Land at the new planet with a ship load of people popcicles!

Well another good idea would be that troops transport could actually unload and invade Pirate bases... We'd get the same random reward *but* we'd also get a minimum size colony with rebellious population... Would make a bit more sense than having to commit a genocide...

I'm actually having the opposite problem, I'm able to build troop transports without limit and it does not seem to decrease the marine count on the manufacturing colony. Just to make sure I'm looking at the right thing, on the colony under "Defense" it says 0/0 until I build a Marine Barracks. Then it's 4/X where X is differing from one to another colony. Only then does the troop transport appear and I can build it. When I build it, it's loaded with 4 (I am sure because I can invade with them) but it isn't doing what I'd expect. The value under "Defense" stays at 4/X and in fact goes up every 5 turns to 5/X, 6/X, etc like folks have been saying. Doesn't seem to matter how many troop transports I build. It feels broken, like too good to be true - I like how the mechanic is supposed to work where you lose 4 marines whenever you build a troop transport.

Is this a bug? I'm playing on 55.1.1, not sure if others are seeing something like this? Is there a racial trait that causes this? I downloaded thru Steam, I think everything's the latest and greatest but if someone could point me in the right direction that'd be great. Thanks!

I'm actually having the opposite problem, I'm able to build troop transports without limit and it does not seem to decrease the marine count on the manufacturing colony. Just to make sure I'm looking at the right thing, on the colony under "Defense" it says 0/0 until I build a Marine Barracks. Then it's 4/X where X is differing from one to another colony. Only then does the troop transport appear and I can build it. When I build it, it's loaded with 4 (I am sure because I can invade with them) but it isn't doing what I'd expect. The value under "Defense" stays at 4/X and in fact goes up every 5 turns to 5/X, 6/X, etc like folks have been saying. Doesn't seem to matter how many troop transports I build. It feels broken, like too good to be true - I like how the mechanic is supposed to work where you lose 4 marines whenever you build a troop transport.

Is this a bug? I'm playing on 55.1.1, not sure if others are seeing something like this? Is there a racial trait that causes this? I downloaded thru Steam, I think everything's the latest and greatest but if someone could point me in the right direction that'd be great. Thanks!

This thread is from early access when troop transports worked differently. Since the game's release you can build unlimited troop transports as long as you have a marine barracks.